FORT MCCOY, Wis. - Operations Area Freedom, upon first appearance for a U.S. Army Soldier, might not look much different than any other training site they’ve seen since Basic Combat Training. There are checkpoints, bunkers, guard towers, motor pools. Present is the hustle and bustle of service members at work, rain or shine. Yet, looks can be deceiving.
Housed within this operations area and its counterparts, Justice and Patriot to name a few, is the life blood of Combat Support Training Exercise (CSTX) 78-15-02. Service members throughout the country, and from all over the world, gathered together for an elite and unprecedented training experience, June 6-26 at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin. On June 22, just a few days before it all comes to a close, they’re still going strong, balancing the real-world needs of service members while conducting training scenarios.
As part of the mayor cell on Freedom, Capt. Stephen D. Hueckel, the Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment commander and operations area director with 718th Transportation Battalion out of Columbus, Ohio, sees this every day. His unit is tasked with running Freedom, which consists of taking care of the needs of approximately 1,000 U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force, along with British military personnel, as well as performing tactical missions. This includes everything from coordinating personnel for guard duty, to providing food, water, housing and ammunition.
In between that and protecting the operations area from oppositions forces (OPFOR), the 718th provides customer service, dispensing cleaning supplies, and fielding equipment requests for things such as tents, air conditioning and shower facilities maintained by the civilian contractors.
“It’s really just ensuring that the life support sustainment is happening successfully,” said Hueckel.
While they’ve done some Class I missions, which included distributing rations or ice, it’s mostly a centralized and Operations Area Freedom-specific operation.
The key is being proactive rather than reactive, using all available forms of communication - runners, telephones and radios - to ensure connectivity, said Hueckel.
First Lt. Nathan A. Staff, with 718th Transportation Battalion, works as the support operations officer. His unit is responsible for managing transportation operations, which entails filling out movement request forms, turning them into movement plans and executing pickups for the requests.
“We also get simulated missions on TACNET from the higher headquarters and we have to staff those through the process, and then report them to higher as if they were real,” said Staff.
The 718th exemplifies the spirit of the exercise: Perseverance and success.
“I think one of the greatest things that we probably came up with was our ability to marry a transportation company and a lift company to support 4,000 Soldiers on seven FOBs, and be able to have on time delivery and pickups,” Staff said.
Adjusting their staff processes by seeing what works and what doesn’t has allowed them to become even more efficient. For example, streamlining their tracking processes led to pulling off a flawless retrograde as the exercise draws to a close.
Army Reserve Soldiers can always increase their technical and tactical abilities, said Staff. Getting through those challenges, having an open mind while in these exercises, and growing from mistakes are what everyone should strive for.
The 2015 78th Training Division’s CSTX is the largest U.S. Army Reserve exercise in history. With over 10,000 Soldiers conducting training operations on seven military installations throughout the United States, growth and success were fully taken advantage of.
| Date Taken: | 06.22.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 06.24.2015 19:53 |
| Story ID: | 168009 |
| Location: | FORT MCCOY, WISCONSIN, US |
| Hometown: | COLUMBUS, OHIO, US |
| Web Views: | 49 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
This work, US Army Reservists rise to the challenge at Operations Area Freedom, by Kiera Anderson, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
